Pacemakers for generating artificial stimulating pulses for the heart, and which may or may not be implanted in the body, are well-known. Pacemakers can be classified into demand and non-demand types. A demand pacemaker only issues an artificial pulse if the heart does not produce its own satisfactory natural beat, whereas a non-demand pacemakers issues artificial stimulating pulses without regard to the presence or absence of a natural beat.
A demand pacemaker normally includes an input amplifier for receiving and amplifying electrical signals from the heart (which signals might result from either a natural beat or an artificial pulse which has just been generated by the pacemaker), a pacemaker control circuitry which receives the amplified signals and which causes a new artificial stimulating pulse to be generated (for transmission to the heart) only if the amplified signals, or lack thereof, show that an artificial stimulating pulse is required by the heart (i.e. on demand), and an output amplifier which receives and amplifies the artificial pulses generated by the control circuitry, for passage to the heart.
Many types of pacemaker control circuitry as described above are available. Some function on an analog basis to produce the accurately-timed artificial stimulating pulses, whereas several recent designs employ digital circuitry.
Of necessity, the input amplifier requires a high sensitivity and it has been found difficult to design an adequate amplifier that does not saturate for too long a period when an artificial pulse is transmitted to the heart by the output amplifier (this pulse being detected by the input amplifier). However, this need not be a problem provided the saturation period can be kept sufficiently short so that the input amplifier recovers in time to detect the presence or absence of the next expected natural beat.
The load which is driven by the output amplifier (the electrodes and the heart tissue itself) has capacitive properties and these, coupled with the capacitive components normally present in the output amplifier, can act to extend the length of any artificial pulse transmitted to the heart. Even if a sharp artificial pulse is generated by the pacemaker control circuitry, the capacitive effects at the output cause the trailing edge of the pulse to be extended so as to give a somewhat exponential decay back to zero. This extension of the output pulse is reflected at the input amplifier by increasing the length of time for which the latter remains saturated.